There aren’t a lot of genre shows that can boast more than a decade on primetime television, but Supernatural on The CW has managed to stay on the air for eleven seasons and has already been renewed for a twelfth. Now, a major shake-up has gone down behind the scenes of Supernatural, and there’s no saying just how large an effect it will have on the future of the series. Showrunner Jeremy Carver is leaving Supernatural at the end of Season 11, and he’ll be replaced by Robert Singer and Andrew Dabb as co-showrunners.
A major change in leadership isn’t something new for Supernatural. Series creator Eric Kripke worked as showrunner for Seasons 1 - 5. Following his departure, executive producer Sera Gamble took the top job for Seasons 6 and 7. After Gamble stepped down, Jeremy Carver tackled showrunning duties for Seasons 8 – 11, and now he's stepping down before Season 12 to focus on his new CW series Frequency, according to TVLine.
The partnership of Robert Singer and Andrew Dabb will be the first time that the showrunner position on Supernatural has been officially shared. It’s possible that collaboration between the two men will result in a very different Supernatural going forward. The show has had to reinvent itself more and more often in recent years as the Winchesters are running out of new types of supernatural creepy crawlies to kill, so perhaps two heads will be better than one in crafting the next chapter of the show’s mythology.
Neither Robert Singer nor Andrew Dabb are exactly new to Supernatural. Singer has been working on the stalwart fantasy drama since way back in Season 1 as an executive producer, director, and writer. The beloved character Bobby Singer was even named for Robert Singer. For his part, Andrew Dabb joined the team at Supernatural in Season 4 as a writer and story editor, and he’s since worked his way up to the role of co-executive producer. Supernatural definitely isn’t the sort of series that should ever go for an outside hire for the role of showrunner, so two veterans stepping up for a larger role is the best that fans could have hoped for.
Of course, there’s no saying at this point just how much of a future is still ahead for Supernatural. The Season 12 renewal means that Robert Singer and Andrew Dabb have at least one year of showrunning ahead of them, but stars Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles have already admitted to having visions of how they’d like the series to end. On the other hand, CW President Mark Pedowitz has gone on the record as predicting that Supernatural will outlast his tenure at the network so long as the numbers remain steady.
There are only two episodes left of Season 11 of Supernatural, so be sure to tune in to The CW on Wednesdays at 9 p.m. ET to see what will happen to the Winchester boys before Robert Singer and Andrew Dabb take over. To see what you’ll be able to watch on primetime during the wait for Season 12, check out our summer TV premiere schedule.
